


Red

by Kahvi



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-20
Updated: 2010-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-09 01:31:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lister and Kochanski try their best to adapt to one another, but the mood and their intentions aren't always amicable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://community.livejournal.com/fanfic100/profile)[**fanfic100**](http://community.livejournal.com/fanfic100/) challenge - [my table is here](http://kahvi.livejournal.com/513913.html).

"Dave, have you seen my red pills?" Kochanski walked through the door to Lister's quarters far too elegantly for someone who had their head stuck half-way down a bag they were rummaging furiously through. It annoyed Lister, who had lived on Starbug exclusively for more than a year, and still tripped over those smegging high thresholds from time to time. She'd been here barely a month, and walked like she'd designed the place. For all he knew, Lister grumbled internally, she might have.

"No," Lister muttered, trying to look very busy with the mending of his trousers. The problem was, he realized with some frustration, that it was very hard indeed to look busy when you had no smegging idea what you were doing. "And I haven't seen yer blue pills either. Tell you what; if this is the Matrix, I don't want to know what the real world is like. I'd take my chances here, if I were you."

Kochanski glared, her lips contracting in a grimace that looked completely out-of-place on her carefully made-up face. "My _red pills_, Dave. This is serious. I need them; I take them every day."

"Oh, eh?" Lister looked up. She did seem pretty agitated. If she had a medical condition, he hadn't heard about it, but you didn't always talk about these things, did you?

"Yes!" She zipped the bag shut and tossed it onto the spare bunk with a little fit of spluttering annoyance. "God! I could have _sworn_ I put them back in there yesterday." She bit her lip, tearing at a stray lock of hair that had escaped the neat bun on the back of her head. Her hair had grown longer, and it seemed to irritate her that it would no longer fit into her usual styles. Kryten could easily have cut it, but the two of them were avoiding one another seemingly out of sheer spite. Lister thought it was funny; they would have had a lot in common if they'd only get over themselves. If only, he thought with dark amusement, she'd fancied him as much as Kryten did.

"What're these pills then," Lister said with measured nonchalance, knowing that would get on her.. well, her... it would get to her.

"I told you," Kochanski snapped, "my red pills!"

This was a lot more fun than mending trousers. Lister dropped them onto his duvet, taking care to secure the needle. He'd made that mistake one time too many. "Yeah, ya told me. What're they for, then?" He raised an eyebrow. "Unless ya don't want to tell me?"

She blinked her eyes at him perplexedly. "Well..." she hesitated. "Of course I don't mind telling you. There's nothing _wrong_ about it. It's all perfectly natural." As Lister watched with amusement, she sat down on the spare bunk, picking up her bag again and turning it over in her no longer all that well-manicured hands. Little bits of red polish gleamed near her cuticles, left over from her last, hurried, impromptu make-over. "I mean... I just assumed you knew." She gave him a quick glance.

"Go on then."

"They are... Simply put, they are a collection of hormones, meant to eliminate or suppress the physical symptoms of the female reproductive cycle."

"Wha, birth control? Yer on birth-control three million years out in space?" Lister snorted a laugh. "What're ye afraid of; disembodied mutant space-sperm sneaking into yer bunk at night?" Yeah, and me, Lister added, seeing Kochanski's gaze resting a little too long on him. But that's even less of a danger than mutant space-spunk, isn't it?

Kochanski shifted slightly, looking uncomfortable. "It's not birth control. I mean, it does prevent pregnancy, but that's not it's primary purpose is. It's a combination of progesterone, estrogen and rupertrone..."

"Rupertrone?" Lister spluttered.

"_Yes_," Kochanski continued patiently, "it's a designer hormone. The head of the company that held the patent insisted it be named after his husband."

"Did he now?"

Clearly trying to ignore Lister's badly concealed laughter, Kochanski nodded with dignity. "Yes, he did. Anyway, that's beside the point. Rupertrone was what made suppressing the menstrual-cycle altogether, without any harmful side-effects at all, possible."

As Kochanski somewhat surprisingly came to sit down next to him, Lister worded himself carefully. "Why would anyone want to do that?"

Kochanski looked at him as though he were an idiot. Which, when all came to all, wasn't all that different from her usual expression around him. "Because it's bloody painful and annoying and horrible and disgusting, you... you... _goit_!" Her arms started waving about as she spoke, ending in a crescendo of flailing elbows and wrists that came pretty close to slapping Lister, who had shown enough forethought to back away somewhat.

"Eh now," he mumbled, from behind a protectively upturned arm, "I didn't know that."

"Well, of course you didn't. No sane woman would _choose_ to walk around bleeding for a week while hormones wrecked her body if she had the choice! Everyone takes red pills."

"What, everyone?"

"Yes! Weren't there any women in your family?"

"Just me gran. Why?"

Kochanski gave off a rather frightening sound half-way between a drawn-out moan and a sigh. "Perfect. _S...m..egging_ perfect!" She seemed to taste the expletive like some illicit drug; worried, but clearly enjoying it.

"So," Lister began, hesitantly, when you get it, you..."

"I don't know," Kochanski yelled in interruption, "how am I supposed to know? I've never had it!"

Lister raised an eyebrow. "Never?"

"Of course not." She was sulking now, grabbing one of Lister's pillows and hugging it. "I'm going to turn into some emotional hormone-driven beast, and I'm going to bleed from my... my..."

"All right, all right." Lister waved his hands in her general direction, trying to push the mental images away.

Kochanski sniffed, hugging the pillow tighter. "Honestly, Dave... if you've hidden them or something, I really need to know. Really. I won't be cross or anything. I just want my pills."

Feeling a tug of remorse on his conscience, Lister bit his lip. "But it won't be... it can't be that bad, can it? I mean, I'm sure women managed..." which was all _he_ managed to get out before Kochanski interrupted with a snort and a haughty stare.

"Managed. Oh yes, I dare say they manged." Her mouth quirked into an unamused smile. "They also managed without washing their hair more than once a month, and without electric washing machines and penicillin and all those little modern conveniences. But we've _evolved_ since then, Dave, or hadn't you noticed? Do I seem to you like the kind of woman who would scrub a floor on her hands and knees?"

"No," Lister said, meeting her eyes calmly. The tugging had stopped.

"No," she agreed, "I don't, because we have house-bots for that. And I don't rave around bleeding in pain, a slave to my hormones either, because," she leaned towards him as though for a kiss, "I have my red pills. Or I used to, until someone _took them_..."

"All right!" Lister flinched away, unable to look into those accusing eyes any longer. "I took them, OK? Didn't mean no harm. Didn't know how bad you would get, you know, if you didn't take 'em."

"Right," Kochanski said with surprising calm, "I expected as much." She straightened her back, and composed herself, suddenly the image of reason and diplomacy. "Very well. I shall accept an apology, as long as you give them back to me right now." She held out her hand, waiting.

Lister cringed. "Erm... give what back?" he tried.

"Dave..." she opened and closed her hand in a surprisingly menacing manner.

"I flushed them out the air-lock."

Kochanski's voice dropped half an octave. "You..." she got no further; words seemed to big to get out of her mouth. They got stuck there, giving her the impression of a cat attempting to cough up a particularly eloquent hair-ball.

Lister tried to give a non-committal gesture that ended up looking like a cross between a shrug and a nod. "Like I said, I didn't know." He watched her carefully, somewhat fascinated by the display of facial expressions. For what must have been a full minute, she just sat there, trying desperately to articulate something. Then, rather suddenly, she jumped up, glared at him, and stormed out. "Sorry!" Lister yelled after her disappearing form.

But he wasn't.

Once the clickety-clack of her heels were no longer audible, Lister put his hands behind his head, and threw himself back on his bunk, chewing reflectively on a dreadlock. Kris had swallowed his story just a little to easily for his liking. What kind of a moronic bastard did she think he was? You didn't just chuck people's medication into space, no matter how useless you thought it was. Hiding it though, that was another matter. Lister snorted. He'd grown up with his grandmother, true, but also a host of female cousins and aunts that seemed to flow through the house like water, not to mention a list of girlfriends too long to remember (though he did, every last one of them, by face and name) once he got old enough. No fancy red pills for any of them; not for any of the working class ladies in Liverpool. Pills were for those that could afford to give their daughters the privilege of a safe, clean cyber-school, expensive clothes, ponies, a lifetime without having to bleed from your genitals, and not knowing that there were those in the world who did.

He sighed. Maybe he'd been to hard on her. But that look on her face when she'd talked about scrubbing floors... his gran had worked scrubbing floors, and at home too. No shame in that. _His _ Kris wouldn't have scoffed at that. _His_ Kris, with the pinball smile, and regular clothes like a normal person, and warmth and letting him keep his boots on in bed.

His Kris, who was dead.

Even from where he was lying, looking straight at it, you couldn't see the crack in the plating of the bunk's overhang. The pills were safe there, for now. He'd give them back, once he'd given Kris a chance to see how _real_ people lived. Yeah, it might be cruel and nasty, but Lister felt rather cruel and nasty at the moment. Too much was changing. But yeah, he'd give them back.

Someday.


End file.
